The present invention relates to surface coverings including floor coverings. The present invention more particularly relates to surface coverings, such as floor coverings having an interlocking design to connect individual pieces of floor plank or tile together. The present invention further relates to methods of making the surface covering.
Current surface coverings, such as floor coverings, are typically laid down by placing an adhesive underneath the floor covering or on the sub-floor or on the underlayment in order to secure the floor covering. In resilient floor coverings, a large piece of resilient floor covering is typically cut in order to fit the dimensions of the room. The resilient floor coverings can often be 12-foot wide and can be any length, such as 12 feet, 20 feet, or longer. With this type of surface covering, it is necessary to adhere the resilient surface covering, such as vinyl flooring, to the sub-floor, underlayment or floor surface in order to keep the surface covering in place and also to achieve a surface covering that is level and does not curl. The installation process of using full-spread adhesive is very time consuming, costly, messy as well as cumbersome. For instance, an installer in general has to do the floor preparation first to remove all oil, dirt, grease, wax, sealers, paint, adhesives or any other substances that would hinder installation. In addition, the subfloor must be level without major pot holes or cracks; the conditions of the subfloor such as moisture content, structure soundness, etc., also have to be taken care of before the adhesive is applied. On the adhesive part, the selection of the right type of adhesive based on the type of subfloor is critical. The proper tools such as trowel type and its size are important for achieving the best economics and performance. After the adhesive is applied, it requires a proper opening time for the adhesive to develop its tackiness before the floor is put down. Any residuals of adhesive oozing up to the surface of the flooring need to be removed quickly before they set and adhere to the flooring surface. Furthermore, the adhesive cost can be quite expensive. The best advantage of the floating floor installation is that products can be directly installed on the existing floor materials without major prep work or removing the existing floor. This is a tremendous benefit for any subfloor for instance, having asbestos content, where any disruption of the subfloor structure can be extremely hazardous to the installer's health.
With all the reasons mentioned above, it should not be a surprise that the design of floating floors has recently become almost necessary as a surface covering. For instance, laminate flooring is used, wherein the laminate flooring typically is a rigid floor plank that can be joined together using a mechanical locking system, wherein one side of the floor plank has a tongue profile and the adjacent floor plank has a groove profile which permits the joining of the two through a mechanical locking system. While this mechanical laminate flooring system has gained great popularity in the United States, there are several problems with this type of flooring. First, the flooring can be extremely heavy since the core of the floor plank is typically made out of a wood-based material, such as high density fiber board. Further, this fiber board is typically not water resistant and also can be insufficiently resistant to even humidity changes. Thus, the laminate flooring can be limited where it is used since if the wood-based core got wet and swelled, this would damage the flooring and the laminate joined floor planks would actually separate. In addition, the laminate floor planks have received some complaints with respect to noise. In other words, persons walking on the floating floor made by such laminate planks have disliked the increased sounds from such a flooring surface compared to actual solid wood floors.
While some attempts have been made to provide flooring surfaces made out of vinyl that simulate floor planks, these designs have not addressed all of the problems associated with previous flooring products, such as the location of adhesives, failure to use mechanical locking systems, design features that permit easy joining of flooring planks together, and the like. The present invention overcomes these problems and provides a surface covering product that is easy to install, requires no adhesive on the underneath surface of the surface covering or sub-floor, is water resistant, and permits a floating floor that is relatively lightweight compared to laminate flooring and provides a walking surface that is more realistic to solid wood flooring, even from the standpoint of acoustic sounds.